What The F@#K Happened This Weekend?! including a movie review of The Descendants

January 17, 2012

Happy Tuesday!

What a crazy fucking weekend we, as a people of entertaining humanity, had!

Where do I even start? Football, fights, meaningless award shows, sad as Hell George Clooney movies… OH I KNOW!!!!!

BOOYAH!!!!!! WOOOO!!!!!

OH MY GOD! I LOVE IT!!!!

FUCKING YES!!!!!!! I LOVE LIFE!!!!

Are you watching these damn gifs?! I can’t hear you screaming, Cleveland?! Wooo!!!

That beautiful twirling and spinning and heel kick of destruction landing is Edson Barboza of this great human fucking race!

In the third round of a close UFC lightweight bout that he was winning against Britain’s Terry Etim, Barboza felt it necessary to summon a spinning wheel kick of death reminiscent of every single Jean Claude Van Damme movie ever made and will be made. AND HE FUCKING NAILED IT!!!! Look at Barboza go up on his toes and everything! It’s beautiful! It’s a work of art! It’s the fucking Mona Lisa knocking Terry Etim’s lanky ass to sleep! It’s just …. … … BOOM! RIGHT IN YOUR FUCKING FACE!

Even more exciting, Barboza is Brazilian (pretty exciting, right? Am I right, ladies? I know you love those Hispanics… they’re all like “yo quiero tu cullo en mi cara” and you’re all like “oooh he’s speaking another language, it’s so beautiful, I wonder what he said” and he’s like “I said you have the most beautiful eyes that they’re like a blinking sunset in front of me” and you’re like “really? Because I saw those Taco Bell ads and wasn’t ‘quiero’ I want and isn’t ‘cullo’ butt because there’s that butt book called cullo?” and then he’s like “Damn baby, I was trying to give you a compliment about how pretty your eyes are and you say I’m lying and throw it back in my face, damn you’ve got trust issues” and then you’re like “I’m sorry, it’s not my native language, I guess I should trust you and all” and then like 22 minutes you’ve drank 3 rum drinks and you’re in his pick-up truck giving him a handy as he calls you “Mommy” and makes noises like a broken lawnmower. Am I right, ladies?) and Barboza’s fight was in Brazil in Rio, Brazil. So the crowd went ape shit when that kick landed like they just won a time travel war against the Spanish and the Portuguese who conquered their native people several times over. Simply Amazing.

BAM!

One thing that boxing and more so MMA teaches you is the physics of a knockout. When you get KNOCKED THE FUCK OUT, you go stiff (Am I right, ladies?) as a board. It’s not really what I think most people expect. For Etim, it looked like Barboza’s kick was a magic spell from Skyrim that when landed froze Etim’s body and life in time like ALLAKAZAAM with your knocked out ass!

Etim’s fine by the way. He got woke up seconds later and despite losing, he’s fine.

Barboza on the other hand is a terror in the UFC’s 155 pound division and is undefeated. FIGHTS!!!!

What else?!

Tebow! TEBOW?! Tebow got stomped by the Patriots pretty similarly to how he got stomped by the Patriots a few weeks earlier. There is a combination of reasons why the Broncos lost – long season for a 1st starting qb, came off a crazy emotional win against the Steelers, they’re not that good of a team, and the Patriots are just a better team in general. At the end of the day, can’t wait to see Tebow next year and I can’t wait to see who they draft and how they fit this team around Tebow and make themselves better. Great job for them to even make the playoffs after going 1-4 and then throwing in a quarterback that people still think doesn’t deserve the job. Tebow has converted into a fan since he’s been in the NFL and I’m excited for their season next year.

HOME TEAMS!!!!!

Minus the G-Men this weekend, the rest of the winners in the playoffs have been home teams. The Patriots stomped the Broncos in Foxborough and the Ravens kept in front and just out of reach of the Texans in Baltimore. The Texans are a really good football club. I think TJ Yates did a great job for a 3rd string quarterback, but if their starter Matt Schaub was in there then they probably would have won that game. Not that TJ did anything too wrong, it’s just that a sure starter like Schaub would have done something more right and made those plays that TJ didn’t. That was a solid game between the Ravens and Texans. I normally don’t root for either of those teams, but next year I think the Texans will only build on what they’ve done this year and have taken that step forward we’ve been waiting on (meanwhile, the Falcons haven’t). As for the Ravens, I will be a true purple and black fan next weekend because FUCK THE PATRIOTS IN THEIR ASSES. I can’t see those dorks in another Super Bowl. I’m rooting for the NFC to win the damn thing no matter who wins next Sunday, but the Pats have to lose.

I don’t know what to say about the San Francisco vs. New Orleans Saints game other than it was one of the best football games I’ve ever watched. Objectively, the Steelers vs. the Broncos was one of the most exciting games in football history probably and the Saints/49ers game was also one of the most high drama and exciting games of football in recent memory. Great game. I’d say watch it and revel in it and the last few minutes of the game is the wildest shit ever.

The Giants are the G-MEN and they fucking ran the fuck over the Packers in Green Bay. Everyone had predicted that if there was a team that could travel to Green Bay in January and beat the Packers on their own field – it would be the G-Men and they were right. The Giants did that same thing a few years ago when Favre was the QB, but this time they STOMPED the Packers instead of just beating the Packers. The vaunted defensive front of the Giants is finally playing the way they were expected to at the beginning of the season and it couldn’t happen at a better time for them. Meanwhile, their offense is looking pretty tip top with Elijah gunning passes into the sure handed trio of receivers of Nicks, Cruz, and Manningham. It’s amazing that Manningham was the #2 to Steve Smith only a year ago, then Smith got traded, so Manningham was the #1, but over the course of 16 games two young receivers have easily and quickly established themselves as the #1 and #2 receivers for years to come.

PLAYOFFS!

This weekend… Giants/49ers in San Francisco… I don’t know who I want to win. Ravens/Patriots in New England… I want Ngata to break Tom Brady’s spine in two.

FOOTBALL!!!!!

The Descendants

I saw this movie last night and my first reaction was SOBBING! Actually, I didn’t cry at all during the movie, but it was definitely sad sad sad sad and not funny at all. I don’t know if that was my fault for thinking this movie would be funny or slightly funny like I did with Everything Must Go and then the movie is a straight up cry-baby drama. I really just think all the humor that was supposed to be in this movie just missed its mark almost every time.

THE GOOD: The acting is top notch by pretty much everyone involved. The stars of the film are obviously George Cloon-er-rooney and Shailene Woodley who you may remember from the movies as THE CHICK IN THE BIKINI. I don’t mind being shallow, but arguably the best thing in this movie is the near constant string bikini action that Shailene is in. I know they’re Hawaii and I’m guessing that’s why they set this in Hawaii. How can we make a movie where a cute 20 year old is traipsing around in a string bikini all the time, but it seems legitimate? HAWAII! She is actually quite good in the acting department as well as the simply ogling department. The rest of the cast shares screen time with the two of them and most of them do good jobs as well in the bits and pieces they get. The youngest daughter Amara Miller also does a good job of being the naive, but disturbed younger daughter who is constantly being ushered in and out of scenes by someone and she is not annoying at all, which is something many child actors have a problem with. So yes, the acting is very good for the most part. The movie also looks tremendous because it is shot in Hawaii. Overall, as a movie, it works with the drama and sadness and has that somber subtlety that was in Sideways and About Schmidt which is the director Alexander Payne’s thing.

THE BAD: First and foremost, Sid. The kid who played Shailene’s friend Sid (Nick Krause) sucked. He sucked! Jesus was he annoying. I don’t blame him as much as the director because Payne cast him and allowed him to act that way the entire movie. He was supposed to be the comedic support, but he was fundamentally unlikeable and annoying. He lacked charm in every scene and every piece of dialogue sounded so forced. I don’t know why they didn’t go for a more Hawaiian kind of kid instead of the half-retarded California surfer boy kid they had. He sucked…

… anyway… The movie wasn’t funny. I think the movie was supposed to be slightly funny, but it really wasn’t and it was really just a straight drama that tried to be light-hearted at times. It was off putting at times like it didn’t know what it wanted to be. Also, the two parallel storylines that are happening in the movie to George Clooney seem to be just that – parallel storylines that never touch. They tried to make them touch with Matthew Lillard’s character, but the two storylines were so worlds apart it seemed forced every time they tried to make one connect with the other. It felt like they had two ideas for movies and decided to make them one movie. I get that more than one thing can happen at a time with people in their lives, but it really felt like people in one storyline were not all affected or had anything to do with the other storyline. It was odd. It was like, oh right George has to do that other thing too.

OVERALL: The movie was good and certainly watchable. I stand by the comments I made judging this movie by its trailer that I would like Alex Payne’s other movies better than this one and that I think George Clooney would be good, but I would have liked Up In The Air better – and I do. This movie is certainly great for about everyone who was in it to use for their highlight reel/resume because it shows they can cry. Almost everyone cries in this movie at some point and even multiple points. I expect we’ll see Shailene a bunch from now in movies as this was her first major motion picture and she shows a lot of acting chops by crying a whole lot and being pretty compelling and strutting around in a bikini. I did enjoy seeing Beau Bridges in the movie for about 6 minutes where he simply pretended he was his own real life brother Jeff Bridges.

All-in-all, 50/50 is a better movie than The Descendants. It is a better mix of comedy and drama and sadness and heartwarming and stuff. I hope when the Oscars rolls around that 50/50, Joseph Gordon Levitt and Seth Rogen are all nominated.